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Australian ‘Crypto Town’ Receives Government Grant For Tourist Boost

Bundaberg is getting some extra money from the Queensland state government to back local startups hoping to improve tourism in the region through cryptocurrency.

The town of Bundaberg, Queensland Australia has caught the eye of the state government recently after it received a sizeable grant of AUD$8,300,000 spread across 70 companies local to the area. Most notably, the company TravelbyBit received AUD$100,000 with the goal being to expand their operations. TravelbyBit is a digital Point-of-Sale (PoS) in the region with their payments app in use in over 30 local businesses, meaning local tourists and merchants alike can easily exchange tokens using their cryptocurrency system. They are not hiding this fact - the towns entrance sign dubs it proudly as ‘Australia's first digital currency town’ with a bitcoin logo, and other cryptocurrencies, shown alongside it.

“Tourism is one of Queensland’s most important industries. TravelbyBit has devised a clever way to make it easier for visitors to our state to pay for their purchases with a growing number of local businesses accepting cryptocurrency payments,”

Continuing;

“I understand TravelbyBit is specifically targeting places like Bundaberg – using cryptocurrency to make it easier for tourists to book holidays.That’s why we’ve invested to help them scale-up their operation and ultimately create more jobs in Queensland.”

TravelbyBits PoS system is currently in use by over 150 merchants throughout the country, and accepts cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, Ethereum Litecoin and Dash - there is no doubt that this grant will go a long way to increasing that number of merchants and cryptocurrencies even more. In fact, it was said that they will soon add support for Binance Coin (BNB), the exchanges unique token.

Part of that expansion it would seem, is to ‘launch the world's first digital currency airport’ as reported by their Co-founder and CEO Caleb Yeoh saying:

“We have partnered with Brisbane Airport Corporation to launch the world’s first digital currency-friendly airport and integrated our cutting edge, blockchain-powered point-of-sale system across the regional tourism towns of 1770 and Agnes Water,”

Further, he said they are targeting a specific market with this funding:

“With this next phase of technology, we are targeting a different brand of tourist — the tech-savvy traveler from anywhere in the world that is looking to book travel experiences ahead of their trip and use digital currency to pay for their adventures”

Things are looking quite exciting for this small town, serving around 70,000 residents, thanks to their local government funding many companies should soon start to accept digital currency at many outlets, not to mention an airport for tourists to access.